Skip to main content

This Week in Legal History -- Judges

On this day in legal history we celebrate the birth of two titans of the bench; judges whose influence not only on the law, but on society at large, are not in doubt. I am of course referring to Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Judge Joseph Wapner who presided over The People’s Court. Who could have imagined that two such influential and esteemed men of the law would also share a birthday?

Justice Felix Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria on November 15, 1882 and emigrated to the United States in 1894 when he was twelve years old. Frankfurter was an excellent student who attended City College of New York and Harvard Law School where he excelled becoming editor of the Harvard Law Review. Frankfurter worked for Henry Stimson who became Secretary of War under President Taft. When Stimson moved to Washington DC he took Frankfurter with him. Frankfurter was soon invited to join the faculty at Harvard Law School. During World War I he returned to Washington DC as a Judge Advocate General. During this period of his life Frankfurter came to be known as a radical participating in Zionist politics and helping to create the ACLU. After the war he returned to Harvard where he worked on his theory of judicial restraint. Frankfurter acted as an adviser to FDR even while he was teaching at Harvard. Upon the death of Justice Benjamin Cardozo, FDR nominated Frankfurter to the Supreme Court to fill the “Jewish seat.” Frankfurter was confirmed without dissent, and was the first nominee to appear in person before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Frankfurter’s tenure on the high court is remembered by his championing of the theory of judicial restraint. Under this philosophy great deference is given to the elected branches of government in the decisions they make, and such decisions should only be overturned if they “shock the conscience.” Frankfurter’s judicial philosophy, combined with his penchant for lecturing his colleagues on the court, sapped his influence and isolated him from the other justices. Frankfurter, as a Supreme Court justice, has come to be viewed if not as a failure as a justice then certainly as a disappointment.

No one could view Judge Joseph Wapner as a failure or as a disappointment. Joseph Albert Wapner was born on November 15, 1919 in Los Angeles, California. He attended Hollywood High School, where he dated Lana Turner (before she was Lana Turner) and received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Southern California. Between getting his B.A. and his J.D. he served in the U.S. Army during WWII where he was awarded a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Joseph Wapner served on the Los Angeles Municipal Court and Governor Pat Brown elevated him to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1959 where he presided until his retirement in 1979. Soon after retiring from the bench Judge Wapner’s second career began. In 1981 Judge Wapner was appointed to another court, The People’s Court, where he presided over 2,484 episodes and approximately 7,000 cases; far more than Justice Felix Frankfurter. Judge Wapner stepped down from the The People's Court in 1993 returning in 2009 for one episode in celebration of his 90th birthday. Judge Wapner also appeared on the Animal Planet cable channel show Judge Wapner’s Animal Court from 1998 to 2000 and made some cameo appearances as himself in several television shows.

How do these two men of the bench measure up against each other? After retiring in 1962 Frankfurter received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wapner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Associate justice Felix Frankfurter wrote 247 opinions, 132 concurring opinions, and 251 dissents. Judge Joseph Wapner appeared in almost 2,500 episodes ruling on some 7,000 disputes, and it would appear he was never overruled. Frankfurter reminds us of hot-dogs; Wapner reminds us of the Oscar winning movie Rain Man. Frankfurter became the flag-bearer of the philosophy of judicial restraint after the retirement of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Wapner’s People’s Court spawned numerous imitators such as Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown; shows in which televised judges solve the problems of real people, shows that continue to be a mainstays of day-time television line-ups demonstrating the legal system to the stay-at-home parent, the unemployed, and those needing an advance on their personal injury settlement.

Both of these men dedicated their lives to the law. There is something correct that these two men who wore black robes and dispensed justice to so many should share a birthday.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le

Texas Subsequent History Table Ceases Publication

This week, Thomson Reuters notified subscribers that publication of the Texas Subsequent History Table will be discontinued and no further updates will be produced, due to “insufficient market interest.” Practitioners have been extracting writ (and since 1997, petition) history from the tables since their initial publication in 1917 as The Complete Texas Writs of Error Table . The tables, later published by West, have been used for nearly a century to determine how the Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals disposed of an appeal from an intermediate appellate court. The purpose of adding this notation to citations is to indicate the effect of the Texas Supreme Court’s action on the weight of authority of the Court of Appeals’ opinion.  For example, practitioners may prefer to use as authority a case that the Texas Supreme Court has determined is correct both in result and legal principles applied (petition refused), rather than one that simply presents no error that requires

C-SPAN Video Archive Now Online

Legislative researchers and politics fans take note. C-SPAN recently completed a digitization project placing the entirety of its video collection online. The archives record all three C-SPAN networks seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The videos are available at no cost for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. The database includes over 160,000 hours of video recorded since 1987 and the programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and locations. The most recent, most watched, and most shared videos are highlighted on the main page. To start watching, visit the C-SPAN Video Library and use the search function at the top of the page.